…all it takes is a dreamer. Can you imagine the Wright Brothers if one was a lawyer and one was an accountant? Why are you going to build this stupid airplane? It only carries one person. Who’s going to buy it? What kind of a profit margin are we going to get? We’ve got forty percent on bicycles. What are we doing this for? Think about the liability! Everybody can sue us! It’s a bad idea. Yeah, let’s not do it. As long as we have that opinion, we’re stuck. What you have to say is, “Gosh it’s something no one has ever done before. Let’s try it.

This philosophy is echoed in the February 2013 Google video, “Moonshot Thinking,” which was created for the Solve for X Project. This kind of encouragement: To be curious, to explore, to dare to try new things, to enthusiastically use all your smarts and hang out with other wonderfully geeky, intelligent and idealistic people who have the naive courage to try to solve problems other people say can’t be solved… THESE are some of the most important attitudes, philosophies, and dispositions we can share with our students today. “Moonshot Thinking” is absolutely one of my favorite videos of all time. I could watch this every day, and never get an iota less excited or enthused about the ideas it espouses.

What is a moonshot? What is solve for X? Watch the 2.5 minute video from December 2015, “Who we are: Solve for X” if you’re ready for even more. STEM. STEAM. BioTechnology. Zero point energy. Scalar waves. It’s the stuff of science fiction, but that’s exactly because science fiction combines possibilities on the edge of the status quo with an unbounded imagination open to doors which can be opened by human brains set on fire with innovation, inspiration, curiosity and connectivity.

Woz was able to invent the future because he had a hacker mentality, that combination of burning curiosity, patience and creativity that enables people to figure things out though epic trial-and-error. He was a tweaker, solderer, tester, reverse-engineer, dumpster diver and code experimenter.

Our 18 year old son is in the midst of applying for colleges and hearing back from those schools. He completed his application for Olin College on December 30th. I HAVE to write about our visit to Olin back in October sometime soon. It was amazing on so many levels! Olin students and graduates are absolutely inventing the future, in precisely the ways Paul Czysz, The Google Solve for X Team, Alan Kay, and others in these videos talk about.